Thursday, February 19, 2009

Recently I wrote a review for Jesse Schell's new game design book. You can read it up on Gamasutra.

Here's a brief except:

Though the elements of game design are well described, practicing designers won't find a lot of new insights that haven't been covered elsewhere. Luckily, the book also includes some more utilitarian tools in the form of 100 "lenses", or questions that help you iterate on your current design.

A designer's job often consists of asking questions. Almost as soon as you start building a game, you need to ask "what should be improved?" There are nearly an infinite number of questions one could ask and often finding the right question to ask is key to coming up with the right solution.

The 100 Lenses are a set of time-tested questions that you can ask about your game. Are you using your elements elegantly? Could your pacing be made a bit more interesting by using interest curves? What is the balance of long term and short term goals for the player? One of my favorites is Lens #69, The Lens of the Weirdest Thing:

"Having weird things in your story can help give meaning to unusual game mechanics -- it can capture the interest of the player, and it can make your world seem special. Too many things that are too weird, though, will render your story puzzling and inaccessible. To make sure your story is the good kind of weird, ask yourself these questions:

What's the weirdest thing in my story?

How can I make sure that the weirdest thing doesn't confuse or alienate the player?

If there are multiple weird things, should I maybe get rid of, or coalesce some of them?

If there is nothing weird in my story, is the story still interesting?"

These are the sort of questions that get me looking at my game designs from a new perspective and can really jolt the creative juices. Not all of the questions will be useful.

However, somewhere in the list are at least two or three questions that even the most experienced designer wished they had asked sooner. By having the questions at your fingertips, you can ask them earlier.

Thoughtful writing on game design always get my brain churning in interesting new directions. With Jesse's book, I was reminded what a broad ranges of disciplines that game design ultimately includes. I have taken a narrower route and spent the last couple of years focused on a rather specific set of tools related to rapid iteration and skill atoms. Yet there are dozens of fascinating nooks and crevices in our evolving craft that one could profitably invest their life exploring.

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About Me

I've been a game designer, pixel artist, toolmaker, physicist and MBA. My first job in college was on a game called Tyrian at a tiny company called Epic Megagames. These days, I'm the Chief Creative Officer at Spry Fox.